Microsoft Partners Qualcomm to Bring ARM Chip Support to Windows Server OS
Microsoft Partners Qualcomm to Bring ARM Chip Support to Windows Server OS
Microsoft has
announced that it has been working with Qualcomm and Cavium
to bring support for ARM chips to Windows Server OS, and it demoed the first
version at the Open Project Compute Summit being held in Santa Clara,
California, this week. This particular server runs on the Qualcomm's 10nm
Centriq 2400 and Cavium's flagship second generation 64-bit ThunderX2 ARMv8-A
server processor- both especially designed ARM-based chips meant for cloud
servers.
This announcement
looks to threaten Intel's premier position in server chips, and brings to light
the much-discussed power efficiency of ARM-based offerings. As PCWorld notes, Intel currently enjoys a 90 percent share in the
market, and the server chips vertical is the most profitable for it, what with
the demand for smartphone chips decreasing. Also, until now, Microsoft used
Intel x86 processors in all its data centres, and now it looks to use ARM
server processors as well. This internal Windows server build will bear the
workload of search and indexing,e in upcoming cloud services at the consumer
end as well. storage, databases, big data, and machine learning for now. The
company also does not rule future use in upcoming cloud services at the
consumer end as well.
Microsoft claims that
the ARM server processors
are found to be "more economically feasible to optimise the hardware to
the workload instead of the other way around." Microsoft engineer Leendert
van Doorn notes in the company's blog, "We feel that ARM is well positioned for future ISA
enhancements because its opcode sets are orthogonal. For example, with
out-of-order execution running out of steam and with research looking at novel
data-flow architectures, we feel that ARM designs are much more amenable to
handle those new technologies without disrupting their installed software
base."
While this move might
be beneficial for Microsoft, the relationship with Intel goes way back with Wintel
(Windows and Intel) being a synonymous name on the PC platform for years now,
Ars Technica notes. There has seldom ever been a Windows build that has
been successful without an Intel chip, however, ARM's popularity may look to
change the tide. At the Summit, Intel did its own bit of showing off with the
new Skylake chips for the Project Olympus servers. Notably, Google is using
these chips for its cloud services.
Separately, Microsoft also confirmed that it is
working with AMD using the company's new Zen core in the forthcoming Naples
processor which is a 32-core, 64 thread system-on-chip with huge I/O bandwidth
from its 128 PCIe lanes.
In December last year,
Microsoft and Qualcomm had also
announced that Windows 10 will get support for ARM chipsets,
specifically, Qualcomm's Snapdragon SoCs. The first of these devices should
arrive "as early as next year", the two companies revealed. This will
enable hardware manufacturers to create portable devices like laptops, tablets,
and even smartphones with support for desktop Windows apps (and games).
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